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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Jan 19, 2022 3:58:18 GMT
Will book 13 ever be written?
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Post by Black Cat on Jan 19, 2022 15:42:08 GMT
John Grant is dead, so the Legends won't be continued. And I think most people here would prefer to read novels featuring new stories, not a rehash of the gamebooks that includes elements that contradict them or a Mary Sue. The continuation of the two trilogies of novels that were started by Mongoose is more likely to happen.
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gibe
Kai Lord
Posts: 15
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Post by gibe on Jan 21, 2022 5:56:20 GMT
Are the novels worth reading?
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Post by rhygar on Jan 21, 2022 9:20:09 GMT
No, gibe, I don't think they are worth reading. I gave up by book 4. They are written by a man who didn't care for Dever's characters and who shoehorned his own characters and themes into the books. Avoid them and just re-read Joe Dever's gamebooks.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Feb 1, 2022 10:07:26 GMT
No, gibe, I don't think they are worth reading. I gave up by book 4. They are written by a man who didn't care for Dever's characters and who shoehorned his own characters and themes into the books. Avoid them and just re-read Joe Dever's gamebooks. I cant even get past book 1.
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Post by lorddarkstorm on Feb 1, 2022 14:36:57 GMT
There's some good stuff in there - I really liked a lot of "The Lorestone of Varetta" for instance.
And adding new characters is a good way to help make the gamebooks work as novels. I enjoyed Viveka's extended use too.
The big issues with the novels to me are twofold: -how often they make Lone Wolf look like an idiot. The most notable example that springs to mind is the beginning of "Hunting Wolf", where LW has inexplicably regressed to some kind of caveman. This in turn makes the new characters appear worse as they're never made to look like fools, only LW (and Banedon, but I'm fine with that at times lol). But having your protagonist being so awful does not make for a good read, and that's always been my main issue with the novel series. -the amount of time the new content takes. Claws of Helgedad took up a book and mostly shouldn't have existed. Shadow on The Sands should not have taken up two books - all the birthplace stuff was twaddle.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Feb 1, 2022 15:07:46 GMT
There's some good stuff in there - I really liked a lot of "The Lorestone of Varetta" for instance. And adding new characters is a good way to help make the gamebooks work as novels. I enjoyed Viveka's extended use too. The big issues with the novels to me are twofold: -how often they make Lone Wolf look like an idiot. The most notable example that springs to mind is the beginning of "Hunting Wolf", where LW has inexplicably regressed to some kind of caveman. This in turn makes the new characters appear worse as they're never made to look like fools, only LW (and Banedon, but I'm fine with that at times lol). But having your protagonist being so awful does not make for a good read, and that's always been my main issue with the novel series. -the amount of time the new content takes. Claws of Helgedad took up a book and mostly shouldn't have existed. Shadow on The Sands should not have taken up two books - all the birthplace stuff was twaddle. Novel 1 = Prelude Novel 2 = Book 1 Flight from the Dark Novel 3 = Book 2 Fire on the Water Novel 4 = Book 3 Caverns of Kalte Novel 5 = Prelude Novel 6 = Book 4 The Chasm of Doom Novel 7 = Book 5 Part 1 Novel 8 = Book 5 Part 2 Novel 9 = Prelude Novel 10 = Book 6 Kingdoms of Terror Novel 11 = Book 7 Castle Death Novel 12 = Book 8 Jungle of Horror
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Post by GhostofLandar on Feb 1, 2022 19:44:46 GMT
www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intjg.htmThis is an interview with John Grant aka Paul Barnett. Putting aside the character of the man, I'm not putting him on trial here, I just think he lacked any sense of Lone Wolf. It's clear that his creations aren't slightly out of step with Lone Wolf but actually entirely at odds with it. Some key excerpts: The Legends of the Lone Wolf series was your introduction (and initiation) to writing fantasy fiction, wasn't it? What was it like cutting your teeth on a game tie-in?Indeed, I'll go further than that: at the time I wasn't much interested in fantasy at all, because too much of what I'd read was the kind of generic crap that still, sadly, constitutes most of what's published in the field. It seemed to me that fantasy, as a literary form, was a dead end; all the good stuff had already been done by people like C.S. Lewis and George Macdonald and Alan Garner and Lewis Carroll and Mervyn Peake and Diana Wynne JonesI had the advantage of having a publisher who was completely ignorant of fantasy and completely uninterested in learning anything about it. The first half-dozen or so of the novels were marked by constant arguments, and a couple of them were butchered before publication; but thereafter the publisher got bored and more or less left me to do as I pleased. Which was great! What I was able to do was, with only a couple of exceptions, make each of the novels different from each other in tone, atmosphere, "feel", construction, style, you name it, so that I could get away from that awful tie-in drabness you so often see and produce novels that were actually, you know, novels. I always remind people that, if they properly want to understand what I'm up to as a fantasist, they should read The Birthplace, which was #7 in the series, plus a couple of the others, notably The Rotting LandHe goes on to say that Joe checked in on him to make sure nothing violated the canon of Lone Wolf and it occurs to me that Joe was still a businessman and wanted at least some aspect of his stories out there, be that for business or to share it with the world. This means he was OK with making compromises with the publisher and author and could later go against anything he didn't believe in. What I find interesting is that the Shianti are described as basically rip offs of a similar race from Moorcock (ebony skinned) by Grant but not by Ian Page and Dever and somehow that was left in. Grant even makes a "polycosmos" which he says is different from the multiverse and sure, in certain respects, but coming from someone who wasn't writing fantasy at the time he delved into it, it tells me he was willing to grab from sources he was reading at the time. I'll say this, Grant/Barnett was the forerunner of a lot of the worst possible trends in popular fantasy/sci-fi today. While he did not invent the Mary Sue, he is one of its greatest early pioneers in the form of Qinefer (and a shard of that in Alyss.) He decides to make Qinefer non-Sommlending but also from Sommerlund somehow but also a great warrior and a potential Kai Lord. He decided he would use the LW story as a skeleton to try out fantasy as a new career path but disrespected the internal lore (Helghast cannot be killed by normal weapons but Qinefer does it. At times he ignores the character and wants to launch a metaphysical discussion... the colors stick...but do they Mr. Grant? Do they really? Or is this some aspect of the pretentious seeping in? There are some excellent passages in the books, I don't want to deny that and I think elevating a "game tie-in" is a worthy pursuit but I just think he could have actually attempted to understand Lone Wolf before trying to do that and could have elevated Lone Wolf or Magnamund instead of "Albion" and the polycosmos. EDIT: Wow, lorddarkstorm stole my thunder a bit--I was going to include but decided not to talk about the 'bestial' Lone Wolf in Hunting Wolf. And I think there's a sinister motive in making Banedon and LW look either like fools or limited in some way when even a canon character like Viveka is not----like I said I think Grant was a pioneer in taking another author's work and using it to defame and tarnish the characters that people loved (unless they serve some other agenda like Viveka.) Grant was not content with adding characters or expanding upon them to flesh out the story and develop Lone Wolf's character but making his characters the real heroes or the only competent people in the story. Also, there is no reason for Lone Wolf's escapade in Vassagonia, arguably the series greatest story, to not have been the center of a vast political intrigue (before and during his landing) and not an excuse for Qinefer and Thog novels. Notice that Alyss and Qinefer and even Viveka share a certain commonality. Why would Barnett feel he had to do this? Because he had a young daughter? I don't know and I don't care. But it's transparent as hell and offensive .
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Post by kolinovic on Feb 4, 2022 11:25:41 GMT
Yeah, I remember when the books came out, I got up as far as The Birthplace, and then picked up The Kingdoms of Terror, but even though I was an avid LW fan I couldn't get particularly excited about the Legends series.
A couple of months ago I tried re-reading them. I think the first three are well worth a read - really flesh out Vonotar and give the sense of Lone Wolf, the kid, trying to succeed against all odds. I quickly found myself skipping over the Alyss stuff, and then the Qinefer stuff, and by the time I was working through Hunting Wolf I was losing interest.
I hated the idea of The Claws of Helgedad and don't ever plan to open that again, but I might pick up the Sacrifice of Ruanon at some stage.
I'm curious how Shadow on the Sand came across, whether Lone Wolf and Banedon ever really move on from being hopelessly dumb to become the heroes they're meant to be, but I'll be skipping Grant's own creations.
All in all, I agree that you need more characters to flesh out a world for a novel than you do in a gamebook (or a videogame for that matter). However, I got the impression that Dever kept a close eye on things in the earlier books, and had more of an input into how the story was told, which redeemed them from where Grant subsequently took things. I thought the idea of the Alyss character was a good one, but her execution was awful. Qinifer, I never really saw the point of. Viveka was perhaps the only well-rounded extra character. I have some recollection that Madelon was turned into a dumpy stupid girl but that could be a mis-recollection and maybe a bit harsh.
I think the idea of a novelisation of the LW series was a good idea, it's just a pity it didn't reach the potential it deserved.
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Post by rhygar on Feb 4, 2022 22:47:32 GMT
I think the idea of a novelisation of the LW series was a good idea, it's just a pity it didn't reach the potential it deserved. In my opinion, to do that would have meant 1) Joe would have had to write them all, start to finish. OR 2) Picking someone with great writing ability, plus a genuine enthusiasm, respect for and knowledge of Dever's world of Magnamund. (And if without the knowledge, a desire to learn.) Both would have been difficult to achieve. 1) The novels came out 1989-1994. Those years saw a busy Joe Dever publishing his Freeway Warrior books [books 3 and 4] then we saw two Lone Wolf books a year in the years 90 to 93 and one in 1994. Writing the novels would have meant he was looking backwards not forwards at a time he was exploring new parts of Magnamund, new stories. 2) How to go about finding that professional writer described above? I don't know exactly how John Grant got the job. Does anyone know? Did the publisher just put him forward? Did JD have a choice? Look at these quotes from the interview - Indeed, I'll go further than that: at the time I wasn't much interested in fantasy at all,-----I had the advantage of having a publisher who was completely ignorant of fantasy and completely uninterested in learning anything about it.
--- the publisher got bored and more or less left me to do as I pleased An 'advantage' for John Grant no doubt, but not one from the point of view of Lone Wolf and its fans. Reading those three lines and the interview as a whole, is it any wonder the novels turned out like they did?
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Post by GhostofLandar on Feb 9, 2022 18:22:56 GMT
I've long thought I could function as a canon expert, so I could advise someone on directions or say "no" to certain things and I don't mean just a name, or killing a Helghast with a normal weapon, or the Elder Magi allowing slavery (or the Vakeros practicing or allowing it) in Herdos, or that sort of thing. More like the feel of a passage or piece of dialogue. Granted I had to grow up a bit and embrace Joe's use of steampunk and even high technology and satellite dishes on Duros but I really trust my sense for the setting. Even to know when Joe himself didn't reach standard (the re-write of Flight from the Dark, for instance.)
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Post by greg on Feb 11, 2022 8:49:09 GMT
I think I could have read more of the Legends books, if they were actually that readable. I could have overlooked the irritating Nary Sue, and just read a different take on the LW adventures, but I found them a slog to get through. So I never got passed book 3 or 4 (which may have been a blessing ).
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Post by pelethar on Apr 6, 2022 14:49:20 GMT
In the interest of balance - I really enjoyed the books and was sad they didn't continue.
I agree the author made choices with the characters and storylines that I didn't agree with personally, but I thought they were well-written. Some of the content, for example fleshing out the character of Vonotar in the early novels, I thought was excellent.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Apr 13, 2022 12:52:47 GMT
In the interest of balance - I really enjoyed the books and was sad they didn't continue. I agree the author made choices with the characters and storylines that I didn't agree with personally, but I thought they were well-written. Some of the content, for example fleshing out the character of Vonotar in the early novels, I thought was excellent. How i wish Book 13 was written and the title is Arrest at the Eating House.
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Post by Lucy Van Pelt on Sept 11, 2022 2:13:34 GMT
In the interest of balance - I really enjoyed the books and was sad they didn't continue. I agree the author made choices with the characters and storylines that I didn't agree with personally, but I thought they were well-written. Some of the content, for example fleshing out the character of Vonotar in the early novels, I thought was excellent. How i wish Book 13 was written and the title is Arrest at the Eating House. 😆😆😆
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